I setup a new machine with an AMD 7870 graphics card about 2 months ago and have been running SETI@home on it since then, but the astropulse ATI app never stops running when I come back to use my machine after leaving it for a bit, I have to close boinc to get it to stop (telling boinc to stop GPU work and also sleeping boinc do nothing).

A couple more things to check:
Assuming you are using the "simple view" (which is the view that gives you graphics, not tables).
Swap to the "advanced" view (view/advanced view)
You now see a table - you can ignore the contents of the table just now
Select tools/computer preferences
A tabbed window should appear, get the "Processor usage" tab to the top of the pile. This tab gives slightly different options to the equivalent from the simple view.
Untick "While computer is in use"
Untick "Use GPU while computer is in use"
Set "Only after computer has been idle for" to a short time (I think the default is 2mins, which is about right
Set a low value for the "While processor usage is less than" - do not set 0, but something like 25% should be about right.
"OK" the changes.
Now return to the simple view (view/simple view)Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Yes it appears it is... and as far as I can tell the only way to fix it is post on these forums... but since it seems I'm the only one with this issue the only thing I can think of doing is discontinuing use of astropulse... :(

Taking into account that two others (person 1; person 2) have reported that Astropulse (on their ATI GPUs) continues when they suspend BOINC, be it through the Activity menu, be it through 'do not use when computer is in use' policies, I suspect that this user has a similar problem. Only with AP on his Nvidia GPU. :-)

Which then either throws the ball in front of the Astropulse developer (Eric Korpela), or at BOINC's feet (David Anderson). Both have been warned and are on the case. Eric had seen similar problems already, but only with random tasks from other projects.

Jord

Ancient Astronaut Theorists suggest that in many ways, you can be considered an alien conspiracy!

Which then either throws the ball in front of the Astropulse developer (Eric Korpela), or at BOINC's feet (David Anderson). Both have been warned and are on the case. Eric had seen similar problems already, but only with random tasks from other projects.

The Astropulse GPU applications continue to run when BOINC is suspended. That doesn't show up in the stderr.txt file. Only if there's an actual error happening, can we see something in stderr.txt
Or if the app would actually write its checkpoints in stderr.tx, perhaps we would be able to check it against the Event Log at the time to see if it wrote checkpoints at the time of suspension. But alas, the AP GPU app either does not checkpoint (anymore), or it does not write its checkpoints to stderr.txt

I forwarded the information to Eric and David, especially on the note that the Seti_Enhanced application does stop when BOINC suspends, but only the Astropulse application for AMD and Nvidia GPUs does not. And also stressed it happens sporadically, meaning it's difficult to track.

I also think you missed out on Eric's answer in this thread that he did find a bug and is working on a fix. Of course, you're missing out on the email discussion happening between the two devs.

David Anderson wrote:

BOINC suspends/resumes apps by sending them messages via shared mem; the BOINC library handles this within the app.

One possibility is that the app is stuck in a critical section (i.e. boinc_begin_critical_section()). It defers suspend/resume requests while in a critical section.

Eric Korpela wrote:

Yes, it turns out there was an unmatched begin_critical_section. I'm working on a fix.

Now, if you think you can handle it better, be my guest, go ask questions. I think you're secretly miffed at having your name in the application's output and that you think I am accusing you of misdoings. That you therefore feel it is justified to tell me how I should help people around here.

I must say I really do not like your style of posting. Most of your posts and emails come out in an accusatory style, I am not sure if that's what you mean to do, or that it's your lack of understanding of English, or lack of knowledge of netiquette. Perhaps it's time you worked on that.

I'd appreciate it if you stop and cease your hostilities immediately.Jord

Ancient Astronaut Theorists suggest that in many ways, you can be considered an alien conspiracy!

I looked at the stderr files and there is nothing of use in there other than a termination request acknowledgment (but only when I tell boinc to quit not when there's PC activity)

also joined the beta.. in the five mins I've run it, it DLed seti CL for ATI (but not AP) and that also doesn't stop correctly, same as with non-beta seti, CPU based beta seti stopped but ATI one didn't

I think you're secretly miffed at having your name in the application's output and that you think I am accusing you of misdoings. That you therefore feel it is justified to tell me how I should help people around here.

??? Maybe I don't understand your English indeed, especially this passage about "secretly miffed". Well, if you really want to help better then it's worth to mail directly to man who write affected parts of code, not? You disagree? Oh, it's your right, sure :)

But I think we will stop discussion of netiquette and return to original topic.

App checks BOINC exit requests. The single possibility I see where it will not check them is driver crash/restart.
Can original poster look into system log and see if there are notices about display driver? Smth like "your display driver stopped responding and..." ?SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.

2) as I wrote earlier look into system log - were there any mentions about display driver restarts ?

3) did you configure BOINC to stop all excution on not idle state (user presents /keyboard activity state) or only GPU tasks should stop in this state? Have you any another GPU project active to check if it's only AP issue? Early you said OpenCL (or not?) MB app exits correctly, right ?
(OpenCL MB uses absolutely same style of BOINC critical section handling as OpenCL AP, that's why I'm inclined to consider critical section handling mostly irrelevant to this issue)

EDIT:

seti stops correctly its just astropulse ATI that doesn't

Lets start to be more precise with terminology and distinguish CPU tasks from OpenCL/GPU tasks at least. Both apps are "SETI" in broad sense so perhaps you spoke about SETI MultiBeam (or SETI Enchanced) app. But CPU one or GPU one ?SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.